About this site

The American Wasteland lampoons the political scene in a blatant effort to help its editor break into the lucrative easy-money field of pop punditry. It is dedicated to Lord Acton's famous and accurate observation that "power tends to corrupt and absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely." So many targets, so little time. Although not explicitly philosophical, the site's editorial content generally reflects a libertarian perspective. On these pages we tend to hold almost all politicians in utter contempt. We do not find public service a noble calling. Rather we see it as a threat to human freedom. Liberals and Conservatives differ only over which personal freedoms they which to eliminate, while Moderates pride themselves on their ability to forge a coalition based on which restrictions garner the most support. At The American Wasteland we are obsessed with personal liberty and see only electoral choices between the lesser of two evils. We do no hesitate to point out that the lesser of two evils is still evil, and we have a lot of finger-pointing to do. Fortunately, most power-lusters consider public respect to be essential to their self-esteem, even if they have to beat it out of us. They also tend to have an exaggerated sense of self importance. They are humorless, clueless, pompous, obnoxious, and/or repulsive. The most effective way to strike back at them is to hold them up to public ridicule. That is what we hope to do in The American Wasteland. Toward that end, we produce three main features, The Vulture Watch, Rave On, and Max Splatter: Critic-at-Large, as well as provide you with some useful information. The Vulture Watch takes the form of a fictional news service that tries to provide a humorous take on the political scene, hopefully with an occasional sharp penetrating edge. The stories are complete fabrications. We make them up. But, they get their bite from the belief that they could be true given what we know about the world around us. We like to think Vulture Watch provides a more accurate perspective on the American scene than what you usually get from the news media. Don't forget to read the Warning and Disclaimers in Read this first. Rave On constitutes our editorial page. Here we provide a factual take on issues of the day that tick us off. We try to provide some new and interesting perspectives that we think are missing from the public debate. Max Splatter: Critic-at-Large provides a light-hearted spoof on the cultural atmosphere that infects the land. While making fun of the silliness of many aspects of pop culture, we try to sneak in some political points when you least expect it. From time to time we'll add some recommended reading to our Books page and provide some Links to useful sites that help you cut through the political blather. Also, we'd like to know how we're doing, pro or con, so, if something comes to mind why not use our Feedback link to send us e-mail. We might just publish it on our Feedback page. If we add some new stories to the site, we'll place the old ones in our Archives. In the meantime don't take any wooden campaign promises. We all know what they are worth. The American Wasteland is, written, edited, designed, and copyrighted by Gary Greenberg. See Reprint Policy for permission to reprint stories from this site. Vulture Watch, Rave On, and Max Splatter: Critic-at Large are trademarks of Gary Greenberg.